life
The Full Moon In Taurus Will Urge You To Fall In Love With Yourself
The rituals that turn self-care into self-romance are not frivolous.
A full moon in Taurus is a sumptuous thing, a planetary body reveling in its own heft. The second full moon of the month, a Taurus full moon knows more isn’t excess — more is more.
She unveils the whole of herself in the daytime, and the light of the Sun gives her time and space to be alone with her power before nightfall shares it with us. I am thinking now of the last poem in Adrienne Rich’s 21 Love poems, at the end of all that Sapphic (Venus-worshiping) processing, cast back toward a generous solitude, she writes: “the color of stone / greeting the moon, yet more than stone: / a woman. I choose to walk here. And to draw this circle.” I am thinking, too, of Moonstruck, and Cher (who is both a Taurus and a Rich Man) in her role as Loretta Castorini, dying her hair black, donning a new red velvet dress, and putting her lipstick on the floor by candlelight in a full-length mirror, in preparation for a date with a new man the following night. To seduce ourselves, to fall a little in love with ourselves, to treat our senses as if they are lovers seeking stimulation — these are the rituals of a Taurus moon.
These rituals, which turn self-care into self-romance, are not frivolous. They are not the mindless internet shopping memes that boast the Taurus glyph. They are not the performance of superficial wealth or beauty for the eye of the beholder. Like drawing a bath for a child and filling it with objects and textures that bring them pleasure, they are intimate, intentional, and vulnerable. Pouring water over your own body, cracking eucalyptus leaves with your fingers and holding them to your face, a veneration of our closest Earthly gifts. In drawing the circle, we make an altar to ourselves, we hold ourselves sacred. Practices like this, nurturing our senses, teach us how to see the divine in bodies different from our own. We start inside the circle and move outward. The people who we meet raging against otherness are most often the people who have been taught who they are only in relationship to who they are not. Never in relationship to themselves, never in relationship to love.
A full moon in Taurus is a reminder that we are part of a song that began long before us, and that will continue long after us. There is space in a song like that for discordant sounds, for chaos, and for mourning. With Uranus making a conjunction to our full moon, it’s likely that many of us will feel a rise a tension in our Earthly bodies, a welling up of anxious energy. But, just as anxiety is a symptom of worry and unease, so too is it a symptom of want and anticipation. With Mercury in Scorpio squaring Saturn in Capricorn, this want can turn quickly toward impatience and projection. It’s important in the days ahead to keep good stock of what we do and do not know. To hold what we are sure of firmly in our minds and turn the burner down on all of our “educated” guesses. We have, after all, had more than enough suffering this year, and predicting more won’t make it any less.
This call for presence, for affirmation of what we have rather than what we’re afraid to lose, for observation (both daily and divine) is not a call to idleness. I assure you, no matter what you’ve read or imagined, you’ve never met an idle Taurus in your life. Taurus energy is isometric, steady, and responsive. Methodical, a cow will stand in the center of a high-grass field and slowly eat a circle around itself, its neck impossibly flexible. Cautious and calculated, a calf will spend what feels like hours inching closer to a new human, studying the signals of their body while appearing disinterested and avoiding their gaze. A calf will resist your touch until it is ready, and often its readiness depends on your stillness and gentleness. There is, on this Earth, and in this Universe, a rhythm we spend our lives learning to recognize and surrender to.
